TikTok has been in the news for all the wrong reasons over the last few months. With tension between the United States and China heating up (starting in 2017 but increasing more over the previous few months over issues like Taiwan, Ukraine, and global trade), bipartisan US policymakers announced and passed a nationwide TikTok ban unless ByteDance, its parent company, sells it to a US-owned company.
With the platform's future at stake, we decided to use Infegy Starscape, the newest member of Infegy's social listening product suite, to understand how engagement (likes, shares, and comments) changed on TikTok in the lead-up and aftermath of this potential platform-altering ban.
We'll first examine post volume as a barometer for the fallout before we discuss TikTok's changing engagement. Figure 1 shows the volume around this conversation over the last two years. You'll notice three spikes. The initial spike occurred in March 2023. It reflects the nationwide (and worldwide) attention paid to President Biden's banning of TikTok on Federal government cell phones and computers.
As is typical for a news-related topic, we see post volume declining sharply for the following year until a surge when Congress passed the ban in March 2024. Based on past analysis of similarly breaking topics, we predict that volume will continue to dwindle until TikTok is bought or banned.
Figure 1: Conversational post volume about a potential TikTok ban (January 2023 through May 2024); Infegy Social Dataset.
Now that we've looked at the post volume, let's examine the underlying conversation that makes up those two large spikes. The word cloud in Figure 2 is color-coded by sentiment, with red reflecting negativity and green reflecting more positive underlying conversation. You'll note that almost the entire discussion is deep red—this is especially common within political topics. Elevated anger is a hallmark of US political discourse.
Figure 2: Top topics about TikTok-ban conversations (May 2022 through May 2024); Infegy Social Dataset.
Let's examine how behavior on TikTok has changed since January 1, 2024. We picked this date range because it reflects engagement pre- and post-ban passage. We split post engagement into three categories: likes, comments, and shares. We found that all three have declined throughout the year, suggesting a less engaged overall TikTok audience.
Likes are the lowest-effort engagement metric. Over the last five months, we observed a steep average decline (-4.7 fewer likes per day) with an r² of .823, indicating a strong correlation. This suggests that TikTok posts are receiving less engagement overall.
Figure 3: Average likes per TikTok Post (January 2024 through April 2024); Infegy Social Dataset.
Shares involve more public effort than likes, reflecting stronger user affiliation with content. Figure 4 shows a less steep decline in shares, with a significant spike around March 15 due to news about a nationwide ban. However, this spike has since normalized, aligning with the overall decline in engagement.
Figure 4: Average shares per TikTok Post (January 2024 through April 2024); Infegy Social Dataset.
Comments, a high-effort engagement, show a steady decline from January through May 2024. Unlike shares, this trend is not tied to specific ban-related events. The global drop in comments could be concerning for creators and agencies as it reflects reduced audience interaction.
Figure 5: Average comments per TikTok Post (January 2024 through April 2024); Infegy Social Dataset.
Using Infegy Starscape, we detected significant declines in user engagement on TikTok from January 2024 onward. These findings emphasize the importance of monitoring social platforms to allocate marketing resources effectively and stay responsive to platform changes.